Five-headed Birds and the Great Brazilian Baby Boom of 2011

July 17, 2010.

The cold weather hasn’t lifted.  It has been getting a little colder every day.  The original forecast was for the warm air to move back in tomorrow, but that has been postponed for another week!!!!   Usually these cold weather fronts last two or three days.  This has already gone on for 5 days and the last time they had a winter as cold as this was 35 years ago.  All the houses are set up for the heat with open verandas designed to catch the cool night breezes.  We are all now sitting on the verandas wearing 5 layers of clothes praying for warmth.  There is no heating in the house at all.  Not even little space heaters.  The only warm place is in bed.  This cold air is covering all of Brazil including Rio and all the beaches.  I predict a major baby boom in Brazil in April 2011.

Campo Grande airport has closed and no flights have landed there in the last two days.  There are reports that livestock in Matto Grosso do Sol is starting to be effected by the weather and that 700 cattle have perished from the cold.

Some weather experts are blaming the prolonged cold spell on la Nina ocean warming patterns.  For 10 years the Pantanal had been receiving less and less rain and the annual flood levels had been decreasing.  Last year there was record flooding.  There is a photo from the last flood season in the dining room of the lodge showing Ivone (the owner) sitting outside the front door of the house, knee deep in water with piranhas swimming around her feet.

Still, the guests had traveled a long way and spent a lot of money to get to the Pantanal so we soldier on with the usual round of activities.  I went on the boat trip upriver this evening and we came across what at first looked like a very strange, wide and long blackbird perched on a branch.  On closer inspection it appeared to have 5 heads and 10 feet.  The poor birds were lined up, crammed together, feathers fluffed, huddling along the branch to share body warmth.  Five headed birds - another symptom of climate change!!!!

I tried the cachasa method of warming up once we got back to the house and took a shot of the local rum. It had the strange effect of only heating the top of my head.  From the cheekbones up I was very toasty warm indeed, feeling red and almost like I was radiating heat from my temples.  The rest of me was still chilly though.

July 19, 2010.

I woke up to another cold morning.  The cold had lasted a week.  The air was so wet and frigid that it got into your bones.  The morning greeting had become a teeth chattering “Bom Dia” and then a good humored competition to see how many layers of clothes each person was wearing.  The record was eight layers of T-shirts, cardigans and sweaters covered over with light jackets (no-one has winter coats here).  Things were getting dire.  There is no clothes dryer at the farm because 360 days out of the year it is hot here and laundry dries on the line.  Any attempt at hanging laundry over the past week only resulted in it getting wetter.  So by this morning we were all chilled to the bone and perhaps a little stinky.

Emerging from my cabin near the pond early, I saw the first blue sky.  The actual tail end of the front was visible in a distinct line as the low clouds suddenly gave way to pale blue morning sky.  I sat warming my hands around my coffee cup and watched the blue slowly progress across the sky to where the sun was hiding.  Campo Grande airport had been closed for three days due to fog, so we only had three guests - an avid birdwatcher from England and a honeymooning Italian couple who had spent the first week of their married life shivering on the empty beaches of Rio.  We all sat there, waiting and watching the dividing line in the sky.

At last the blue sky reached the sun and it poured out from behind the clouds for the first time in a week.  I joined the guests as we all ran outside, blinking and dancing and in fits of madness opening our jackets to expose our seven layers of mismatched t-shirts to the rays of the sun.  The cowboys swaggered out to join us and the kitchen staff not far behind them as we all indulged ourselves in a merry sun dance.  The water of the pond splashed as the caimen dragged themselves out of their hiding places in the mud to warm their scales in the sunlight.  The birds emerged with a screech and a squawk in a sudden cacophony of birdsong and a flock of rosetta spoonbills swooped overhead defrosting their wings.  Man and beast lifted their faces to the sun, and in an instant, all was forgiven.